Wednesday, July 17, 2013

In Praise of Fields

Everyone loves the ocean. Most people love the woods. Some people,
including me, love the high deserts of the American Southwest. But how many
people love the ordinary midwestern fields?

If you’re feeling the need to expand your appreciation, this
would be a good year to do so. The summer of 2013 arrived late, violent, and
wet. At one point, following a torrential windstorm, more than a fifth of
Minnesota’s families were without power. That’s close to a million people.

One result of this combination of factors is that now, as we
ease our way into midsummer, the rural vegetation is as lush as it’s ever been.
Or at least as lush as I can remember it. (Perhaps that isn’t saying much.)

A few weeks ago we were out in the Minnesota prairies,
exploring the rich, somewhat treeless countryside aroundLac
Qui Parle. A week later we were at Sibley State Park, north of Willmar, wandering
the horse

trails on foot at sunset, admiring the grasses, the oaks, and the dragonflies.

Last Sunday we took to the Sakatah Singing Hills Bike Trail
west of Faribault, and we were enraptured by the plant life. Some of the fields
alongside the trail are under water, it’s true. Well, they probably shouldn’t
have been planted in the first place. In any case, the egrets are loving it. I
saw six of them in one field alone. I suppose that means there are a lot of
frogs jumping around out there.

Parking our car in a small gravel parking lot just west of
Warsaw, we were immediately accosted by a grove of walnut trees full of golf
ball-sized green nuts. If you get close, they smell like wood, and also like
lime. (Hilary advised me to take a whiff.)

In the next few miles the trail runs through intermittent
patches of sun and shade, with open fields on either side, and the trail is
lined with a veritable cornucopia of summer wildflowers. The cow parsnips
haven’t flowered yet but the sumac is turning red. The dogwood flowers are
fading, the elderberries are coming on, and the purple flowers of the vervain
are half-way up their stalks. Bee balm and bindweed appear here and there,
white and yellow sweet clover is common. One stretch of open grassland just off
the trail was covered with leadplant, though that was the only place we saw it.
Butterfly weed was sparse, though milkweed was all over the place. All the
same, we only saw two monarch butterflies the entire three-hour trip.

But you don’t need to drive for hours to make contact with
the glory of the fields. If you’ve got a morning free, and a bicycle, why not
head up to the best urban/rural bike trail n the metro area, at Elm Creek Regional
Park.

We always approach the park from the SE, taking Hennepin County
81 through Osseo with a right turn on Zachary
Lane. We park in the fire station lot near 98th Street. From there
it’s a short jaunt up to the bike trail running into the park. Avoiding all
visitor centers, this route saves you 30 minutes of drive time and bypasses a
lot of recreational clutter along the way.

The loop around the park perimeter is 16 miles, I think, and
it invariably takes us about 90 minutes.

(OK, so we stop a lot.)

We admire the vast islands of sumac that rise from the
fields, and we noticed just this morning that a new generation of locust trees
has sprung up at one point along the trail. We missed the plum trees this year,
but spotted a very healthy wall of prickly ash. We also noticed a vine we
couldn’t identify.

The trail passes through deep woods, but never for long.
More often we’re screaming past fields of grasses with oaks and maples beyond.
The landscape rises and falls, and one of the great features of the park is that
though we’ve ridden it any times, we never know quite where we are at any given
moment.

The trail crosses a few gravel roads, and it crosses Elm Creek twice.
It’s a skanky rivulet, let’s admit it. But it’s an important part of the
landscape; it reflects the sunlight admirably, and establishes a focus and
direction that the rolling fields largely lack.

We hear clay-colored sparrows buzzing from the nearby bushes
as we pass. And field sparrows trill. Catbirds send out their irresistible junk.
(Maybe they should have been called “scatbirds.”)

The shadows of the deep woods belong to the eastern wood
pewee, high-pitched and forlorn. The open, marshy lakes provide a home for
swans, though we didn’t see any this morning.

No, it’s the grasses, the marshes, the fields, the clouds,
the sky. It's the rhythm of the hills, the sweep of the vistas.

And when we’re through, it’s the lemonade and Sun Chips from
the gas station out on Highway 81.

2 comments:

Give this prairie girl a field any day. Grew up on a southwestern Minnesota farm, but have lived in Faribault for 31 years. Glad you had a chance to explore the area around Faribault. We have a fantastic historic downtown with plenty of unique home-grown shops. Love blue cheese? Yup, it's made and aged right here in Faribault and sold at The Cheese Cave downtown.

Thanks for the note, Audrey. We love downtown Faribault, the cheese, the main street facades, even the nature center SE of town. We have been thinking of canoeing the Cannon River from Faribault up to Dundas, but haven't gotten around to it.

About Me

The Macaroni blog is dedicated to the subjects that have enlivened the print edition of Macaroni for more than twenty-five years - travel, films, food, ideas, music ... you name it. My name is John Toren. I write the blog. If you're interested in lengthier forays into the same fields track down a copy of my new book,All the Things You Are or my previous book By the Way. For a closer look at the state of Minnesota, check out my travel book, The Seven States of Minnesota.